Abstract

Rating and labelling the energy efficiency of homes has been widely adopted to encourage improvements in residential building performance. Such systems have been implemented in many countries and provide a framework and structured set of rules for assessing, reporting and comparing homes on the basis of building energy performance. By enabling such comparisons, rating systems are expected to encourage efforts to improve building energy efficiency beyond the “low bar” set by common practices and minimum building standards. But how do consumers respond to such rating systems, and how effective are they at creating market demand for high-performance houses? In this chapter we seek to answer these questions, by examining the results of surveys of consumers and industry stakeholders in Australia.